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Old 11-12-2010, 08:04 PM   #5
yep
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Join Date: Aug 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChetStrzepa View Post
Recently I subscribed to SOS magazine, and in the Nov issue there's a short mention about Metallica, "And Justice for All", pioneering "aggessive EQ techniques", such as the "smile curve kick"...to improve clarity and separation in the mix.

I was just curious about this...any idea what they meant by "aggressive" EQ techniques? The smile curve kick implies there are some specific techniques.

Thanks
Chet
"smiley" EQ refers to the "smile" shape of the curve, and means the same thing as "scooped". Both are colloquialisms for EQ that either cuts the mids broadly or boosts the highs and lows, or both. A good example of this practically every car stereo owned by any teenager anywhere. Here's what we're up against:



At this point, I'm guessing, but Metallica's early records, and especially Justice, tend to have a very "scooped" or "smiley" guitar and drum sound. There's not a lot of midrange "fullness" or "bloom", and the low end... well, let's not talk about that.

Note that these "aggressive EQ techniques" employed in "And Justice For All..." are NOT generally regarded as a shining example in the history of record production. In fact, I suspect if you were to make a list of something like "best albums ever to artistically survive being ruined by bad production", that "Justice" would be near the top, at least in the "pre-loudness race" category. They had a new bass player, but seem to have given him the album off in favor of the low-ish "wub-wub" of eight tracks of scooped guitars.

What's ironic is that they had just released "the $5.98 ep", which is possibly their best-sounding record to date, production-wise, and which was a low-budget, low-price thrown-together collection of cover songs recorded in a converted garage while breaking in a their new bass player, whom you could actually hear. The sound is muscular, big, powerful, and alive, in contrast to the dead, thin, over-produced and rather wimpy sound of "Justice".

In defense of "Justice", it is perhaps the peak of Metallica's songwriting and skill before they became HardRockica. It is a bit less wildly imaginative than Ride the Lighting and Master of Puppets, but more polished and sophisticated artistically. Also, it was released on the very tail end of the cassette era, and it's aggressively-scooped sound holds up much better on a cassette walkman than it does on modern systems. FWIW.
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